What’s on your inspiration board lately? Of course you know what I’m talking about. Because today, if you don’t have some sort of “inspiring” vintage, ethereal looking tears from magazines or jpegs found on the interweb, you’re dead in the water. So let’s take a look at someone who excels at the art of the Inspiration Board, aka Tumblr, Rae Drake.

Drake’s got her own Tumblr LoveRaedar.com and for this month (which is coming to a close soon) has been guest blogging for OTMZine. With Textstyles’s new interest in Tumblin’ we had to sit down with Drake and talk shop, pet her cat and talk photography.

Q+A1. How old are you and tell the people what you do.
23 and undecided!

2. When did you fall in love with fashion? precisely
I must have been about 2 or 3 years old when I started drawing, and my first creations were princess dress designs. My mom would draw the stick figure, and I would come up with the rest. From there, I paid rapt attention to costumes in movies, and started buying fashion magazines when I was a preteen. I remember coming across the Vogue masthead when I was 12, seeing the title ‘Art Director’, and without even knowing what it meant, decided it was what I wanted to be when I grew up. It just sounded like it was for me.

3. You’ve graduated and fresh out of the gates have a guest blogging spot with OTM magazine, tell me about switching gears from academia to “real world”?
Leaving school feels like the floor has fallen out from under me, but instead of falling with it, I’m merely suspended in space and time. To be so light and free, it’s a weird feeling. To have zero restraints except for the ones I’ve imposed on myself is both exhilarating and exhausting. I didn’t realize how tough it is to balance self-exploration with self-discipline; one always wants to cancel the other out. The things they didn’t teach me in school are the things I need to learn the most.

4. Inspiration boards have become an art in and of themselves of late. How do your inspiration boards come together? Do you have a process? Is it an internet k-hole session?
I love how internet inspiration boards are these amorphous entities that represent their creator/curator’s tastes. Even though so much of the internet is regurgitated and reblogged, the way in which certain individuals appropriate in order to represent their own needs interests and inspires me. Some days, I like to put weird images together, or follow a mood, theme or a palette; other days I impulsively jump from one source to another. I don’t have a formula, but I do have an aesthetic that I try to keep in mind.

5. What is your favourite part of the creative process?
Knowing that although other people created the individual parts, it’s my taste that has assembled them, and with that, I have a better sense of what it is that I want to create for myself.

6. If you were reincarnated and could do anything you wanted, what would it be?
I would come back as a ballerina. I am in awe of their strength and grace. Nothing has ever mesmerized me so much as watching a ballet dancer move on stage.

10. Brunch?Saving Grace is my all the time favourite, plus it’s a stone’s throw from my house. However, I just had the potato waffles and eggs benny from Starving Artist a couple weeks ago, and it might be once of the best things I’ve ever eaten.